


|sins of our fathers

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Series: |we're a broken people| [2]
Category: Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, I cried while writing parts of this, Short Chapters, Worldbuilding, allusions to fabula nova crystallis mythos, headcanons, pre-game, seriously you'll pry XV being a part of FNC from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-06 19:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8767006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: A story never truly starts at the beginning, rather, carries over from the chapters of those that came before, a medias res of naivety.Before there were children, there was sorrow, and regret. |Tumblr| |Twitter|





	1. VERSTAEL|01

**Author's Note:**

> more accurately; 'the fuck-ups of our parents,' but apparently Linkin Park didn't think that was all too great of a line.
> 
> this is the first 'side story' i'll be posting - but it's still chronologically first in the series and since all of the background in the main instalments will be coming from this very fic, it is a must read.
> 
> chapters will be short. if any average over a thousand, then it's because I've gone crazy.
> 
> while the story is chronologically first in the series (not counting the prologue) the chapters/tales within will be told in an order that may give an unsuspecting reader whiplash (they all get separate chapters though, so there's that). what even is a functioning timeline.
> 
> hmu with theories, questions, whatever.
> 
> (someone please come yell at me about this game.)

“This _isn’t working_.”

Verstael spoke in low, grumbling tones, the words meant more for himself than as a complaint against the research assistant working to take notes beside him, but the younger man – a university student, from the looks of his clothing – still flinched.

Verstael raised an eyebrow at him, and the boy stammered out “What isn’t working? Uh, sir?” There was a hesitance in his tone towards the last of the words he spoke that Verstael overlooked, more focused in on and concerned with his own problems then whatever nervous breakdown threatened to ail the mind of one of the assistants he never asked or wanted for, but his Emperor insisted on sending to him anyway. He’d almost think them spies, courtesy of his Emperor’s ever growing paranoia – if it were not for one consistent trait they all shared: their incompetence.

“This _entire_ project,” Verstael growled, and gestured at the wires and sheets of metal that lay, twisted, on the tables before them; still sparking with the remnants of elemancy and chaos.

The assistant (curse his _existence_ ) merely squinted at the trash, clearly not understanding the issue before them. “But…they work within the projected parameters,” he said. “For a prototype model –”

“ _Useless_ ,” Verstael emphasized, and snarled at the stupidity of youth to proud to _listen_ to their betters. “His Imperial Majesty wishes for a _competent_ Magitek unit to be created – one that will remove the need for mageknights to be kept under the empire’s employ. These _scrapheaps_ are not that, nor are they even so much as usable as _bullet shields_ , not as they currently stand. Scrap this production line. We’re going back to the drawing board.”

Leaving the assistant spluttering behind him, Verstael stalked out of the room with purpose, heading up stairs of industrial steel and halls of flood lighting to reach the level he knew his Emperor stood at, watching over the men and women that worked in his laboratories scurrying around like rats.

As best his aging back would allow, Verstael bowed low to his Emperor, rising to a straight and standing position when Idola lifted one hand from the railing he stood at briefly, in acknowledgement.

“The Magitek will not work, then?” He asked, and Verstael scowled.

“Not as it is now,” he admitted. “The chaos drawn from daemons makes them _stronger_ , but does not produce the results that we seek.”

Idola’s back tensed beneath the flowing folds and lines of his pure white cloak, and his hands clenched tight around the cold, gleaming steel of the railing. “Lucis wields chaos,” he barked out; a curse, a reminder. “Their walls are chaos; their weapons, their techniques. For as long as we remain bound only by the pure elemancy Our Lady Eos left us before retreating to the Unseen Realm to rest within Her Field, we will never claim the crystal as our own.”

“The Lucii are powerful,” Verstael agreed, and walked forward to stand beside his Emperor. “Whether that power truly is the remnant free will of departed souls a forgotten goddess bequeathed unto their line or not is something that we cannot know – and unless our charming Chancellor also has the means of ensnaring the High Divine alongside daemons, I doubt we’ll ever find out – but regardless, the fact remains: only chaos can truly fight chaos, an these current Magitek prototypes lack the most integral ingredient of all; one both daemons and the Lucii lay claim to.”

His Emperor hummed distractedly, and Verstael felt worry that Idola had lost himself in his own mind once more – as was becoming more and more frequent as of late.

“And Old One,” Idola said quietly, his gaze and mind miles away. “Not merely one of the High Divine; rather a goddess above even gods. Mentions of The Lady Born of Chaos are far and few between, even in scripture – the Cosmogony does not make mention of Her at all, and fair Eos’ priestesses and Oracles neither confirm nor deny Her existence – but Lucis all but worships the idol of death they call their lady, if quietly, and She bears many names: Mwynn, originally; most recently Yeul. But the answer most common – Etro. And while the legends of this goddess are all but lost to the ages, the few remaining contradictory at best – they all agree on _one_ thing: that in Etro’s third incarnation, She was reborn into the mind and body of a young human girl.” He turned slightly, to look over his shoulder and glance directly at Verstael. “Tell me, my friend – are the myths true?”

For anyone else (with the exception of perhaps the honoured Chancellor), attempting to follow His Imperial Majesty’s twisting logic and train of thought may have proven difficult at best – but Verstael had been with his Emperor and stood at his side for a _long_ while, and knew how to follow the leaps and connections his mind made.

“Yes,” he agreed readily. “From my observations, it seems chaos will only truly respond to human will.” He paused, gauging his Emperor’s will.

“See it done,” Idola ordered. “By whatever means, and whatever cost.”

With that blanket permission gained, Verstael smiled, and bowed low. “As you wish,” he said, and turned to leave, mind already racing. “At once.”


	2. REGIS|02

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited: kind person on tumblr (also kind person in comments, shout out to uarini) informed noct's mother has a canon name: aulea.
> 
> personally I think that name is dumb, if only because i am so used to the name aurelia that my brain tells me there needs to be an r in there somewhere...
> 
> welp. yeah. noct's mum should now have canon name, and i added a tidbit about her and Regis being childhood friends since. well. they were.
> 
> that is all.

Aulea's screams were becoming unbearable.

Inside, Regis shuddered as he watched his wife sweat and wail as she writhed on the bed, struggling to bring their son into the world - but outside, he remained impassive, poised as he had been trained and a king must always be, the only proof of his tension the whiteness of his knuckles, the tension in his jaw.

By Aulea's side, wiping away her sweat and checking over her vitals, one of the midwives glared at him - a sight he was not used to, not since he had ascended to the throne, but he had long grown used to the mannerisms of medics towards those who were not their patients.

"Your Majesty," the woman said through gritted teeth, sweat shining on her face almost as much as it was his wife's brow. "Perhaps it would be best for you to wait in the hall?"

Regis felt his hackles raise as his eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to protest - just as an arm wrapped around his shoulders.

"I'll take him off your hands, fair lady," Clarus grinned, and tugged him towards the door as he spoke, true to his word. "We'll be just outside if anything changes."

" _Clarus -_ " Regis protested, but was cut off as he was pulled outside of the chamber, and held just to the side of the doorway, at an angle that he couldn't see into the room.

"Here," Clarus said, and shoved a paper bag into his hands - from the scent of it, a slice of Violet's egg and bacon pie - "Eat this. Just looking at you is stressing me out."

His hands clenched into fists. "Can you not hear my wife _screaming?_ " He snapped out, just as a particularly piercing cry made them both wince. "Forgive me if I care little for _your_ stress, Clarus."

His old friend sighed. "Childbirth is painful, my King," he said plainly. "Even Violet screamed when giving birth to our Gladio, and have you _ever_ known her to yell her pain out? _Ever?_ "

"...No," Regis allowed. "But did Violet scream like _this?_ " Aulea's screams weren't like the cries of a human in pain, or even that of an animal or beast. They were unnatural, high-pitched and keening, drawn out like the wail of a weeping woman.

Clarus hesitated, and Regis knew he was right.

His hands shook, and just to give himself something to do, he yanked open the bag Clarus had handed him and shoved the pie into his mouth. He'd eaten Violet's food many times over the years, and he'd never known it to be anything but amazing - but at that moment, the pie tasted like nothing but bitter salt in his mouth, dry as chalk and just as textureless.

A hand rested against his shoulder briefly, Clarus consoling him as best he could at that moment in time, the screams of his wife echoing throughout the halls - along with the rhythmic pounding of footsteps slapping against the polished floors of the castle as they hurried in their direction. Together, they turned to face the sound as it grew closer - and the tense figure of Cor Leonis revealed itself.

His Lord Marshall, holder of the majority of military might in Lucis and second in power and status only to himself and Clarus – and he was _here_. He was in the palace, on the night of his son’s birth, when he should have been on the battlefield as planned, fighting alongside his men to keep the empire’s forces from rushing the wall while the king who upheld it was distracted.

“Leonis,” Clarus barked out. “What is the meaning of this?” His grip on Regis’ shoulder tightened, though whether offering him comfort or holding him back as he feared the worst, he didn’t know.

“The wall still stands,” Regis said, feeling the drain of it buzzing, as always, in the back of his mind. “Why are you here, Cor?”

The man’s expression was filled with a sort of distaste Regis had come to know well over the years – a sort of reluctant respect mixed with disbelief at the _stupidity_ of the ruling class. It was a face he had made his longtime friend pull many times in his youth, but it had been years since he had seen it, and _this_ expression was most certainly not directed at him.

“Her Majesty, Queen Sylva of Tenebrae approached my tent on the frontlines,” Cor said through gritted teeth. “She claims she has something she must tell you…and her _daughter_ is with her.”

Ah. That _would_ do it – Cor may have been gruff, and stoic to a fault, but he had a certain fondness for children – ever since the first time the boundaries of the wall had been pulled closer to Insomnia, bringing with it a flood of refugees into the Crown city, the military man had always found time to make sure that the children that had fled from the destruction of the battlefield, some without their parent, were okay. Whatever protection Sylva and her daughter may claim from being of the line of Eos’ Oracles, to him it wasn’t worth counting on as a worthy reason for one with no honour (as he saw the mageknights of Niflheim) to keep from using them as hostages or levergae.

And then he blinked, and felt Clarus pull back in surprise as Cor’s words fully registered – “Sylva is _here?_ ”

“Indeed, dear king.”

The voice was familiar, and warm, and held a telling smile as Regis looked past Cor to see his biggest _what if_ standing not too far behind, hovering in the hall with her hand gripping the shoulders of a little girl with pale hair that must have been her daughter.

“Lunafreya,” Regis stated, and stared, somewhat dazed, at the girl he hadn’t seen since her christening beneath Eos’ Light, in Tenebrae four years earlier.

Sylva smiled brilliantly at him, and nudged her daughter forward, even as Cor scowled and said, “I told you to wait for the king to _invite_ you to an audience.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Sylva said, and rolled her eyes apologetically at Regis as little Lunafreya – apparently frightfully shy – ducked behind her mother’s legs and peeked out at him, rather than introducing herself like Sylva had seemingly wanted. “I won’t be staying long enough for need of an official audience.” Her eyes trailed to the still open door of his wife’s birthing chamber, her screams now quieting to whimpers that sent chills skittering down Regis’ spine.

“Reggie,” she said quietly, and he startled – he hadn’t heard that name in years, not since he and Cid had had their falling out, and his friend had banished himself back to Hammerhead. “Come talk with me?”

Slowly, carefully, Regis nodded. Awkward though being around Sylva had always been since her rejection of him so many years earlier, she was still a good friend and ally; most importantly, was the oracle. If she said she had to speak with him, he would trust in her words – and so, he nodded to Clarus and Cor; Clarus took up Lunafreya’s hand and led her further down the hall, away from the sound of Aulea’s screams that were causing her to pale, and Cor gave a short, brusque salute, understanding Regis’ unspoken order to go back to defending the wall.

“The King of Light is come,” Sylva said sadly once the others were out of earshot, gazing out into a distance Regis couldn’t see. “Congratulations, dear king.” She glanced at him through her lashes. “He’ll be Lunafreya’s, you know.”

It took a moment for Regis’ mind to catch up to Sylva’s words, but when they had –

He remembered, long ago – years earlier, when he had still been but a child, a teenager desperately in love with the princess-regent of Tenebrae who spoke to the gods and wore a crown of icy spires twisted into her golden hair – the woman Messenger who had long stood with the House of Fleuret, loyal to the line of the Oracles had spoken to him off the tales written in the Cosmogony, and how to bring peace and completion to the world a covenant must be forged between ‘crystal king and the oracle of The Fields.’ He’d had no idea what that meant, truly (still didn’t, really) – but he’d taken it as a sign that he and Sylva were meant to be.

She’d let him down, of course, if gently and with a bittersweet smile – but now, he wondered. “Did you see this?” He asked, believing her without question. “That our children…” He trailed off as she shook her head.

“No, not truly,” she said. “But I knew that we were not the ones, as I know that Lunafreya and your son _will_ be.” Her eyes flicked back to the room where Aulea lie screaming, the midwives making soothing noises of encouragement as she wailed and pleaded for the goddess to help her through this trial. Regis flinched, and he would never forget, not even for a single second, the dread and horror Sylva’s next words filled him with, no matter how gentle and soft her tone.

“She won’t survive this, you know.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“The King of Kings must know the pain of loss and sacrifice throughout all of his life in order to sacrifice it all at the end. For the sake of the world, all that the King of Kings loves must die.” She looked at him, her eyes filled with an infinite sorrow. “All children love their mothers first and most as they come into this world. How could she _not_ be taken from him?”

“…And there’s nothing I can do?” His voice was hoarse, shaking to the point that he barely recognised it as his own.

A pause, and then Sylva shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Briefly, Regis closed his eyes. “Is that all you came here to say?” He asked.

“That, and…know I’m here for you, my dear king.” His eyes still closed, he didn’t look at her, but he felt her presence close into him – the lily scent of her perfume mixed with her exuding warmth as she leant up to place a chaste kiss on his cheek like a blessing. “Eos watches over you, as do I. Should you or your son ever need my help, come to Tenebrae.” Heartbreakingly gentle, she brushed a hand against his cheek, and then strolled down the hall to collect her daughter. Once the faint clicking of her heels on marble had faded completely, Regis opened his eyes.

Sylva was gone.

Taking in a deep breath, he pushed himself off the wall he had leant up against at some point and stood straight, heart aching as he stared at the open doorway his wife whimpered beyond, the space between him and her suddenly yawning wide.

He’d loved Sylva, true – and when he’d married Aulea, his childhood friend - he’d thought her pretty and amusing, and had felt affection for her as he had althroughout his life - but the flame in his heart had still burned for the oracle he’d been rejected by. In comparison to that roaring flame, the affection he had felt for Aulea was barely a flickering candle. But unlike the flashfire burnings of passion, candles burnt long and strong and true, and he’d come to love Aulea more than he had ever thought or known possible. The very idea of losing her…

Taking in one final deep breath, Regis strode into the room he had been banished from. If his wife was to die, her life pulled from her by some goddess on high, he was _not_ going to let her go alone, without a goodbye.

“Regis!” She cried out when she saw him enter, her face soaked with sweat and pinched with distress. “Come here, please, come here –”

Whereas before, with Aulea so distraught and wracked with pain that she hadn’t registered his presence or any others, the midwives watching over the birth had thought it best that he be shooed away lest he somehow distress her more – with her crying out for him, her eyes fixed on his face, wide open and pleading – they were quick to all but _shove_ him Aulea's direction, his wife’s hands locking around his with a grip like iron – and just as cold, as if the warmth of life was already draining out of her.

He swallowed as he raised one hand to brush through soaked hair, pushing strands of it away from where it clung to the red skin of her face.

“Noctis,” she gasped out. “That’s – it’s his name. I know – know I said he didn’t have one, but – but –”

“Noctis,” Regis swore, tears blurring his vision as she gasped, eyes clouding over. “Noctis Lucis Caelum.” A watery smile tugged at his lips. “It’s a nice name, Lea.”

Through a whimper of pain, she smiled, too. “Raise our son well,” she said. “Promise me.”

Her grip around his went limp, and the high pitched wails of a newborn filled the room. Regis sat frozen, and then.

“I promise,” he sobbed, and raised a hand to close her eyes.


	3. SOL|03

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if any of you read my first XV fic, '[The Improvisational Method](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8159504)' then you already know who sol candesco is.
> 
> and yes, for all those of you astute in the ways of The Latin, I _did_ call prompto's mother sunshine, because I am a very funny person, you see, and my sense of humour is ~*classy*~
> 
> the next chapter will be another verstael one, because god if the niflheim sections are not the most plotty and lore filled worldbuilding sections of this fic.

_Fira, fira, fira,_ Sol Candesco chanted in her mind, a mantra, a focus, as she pulled together motes of light and heat; filaments of magic and fire, to weave into an undulating sphere that, before her eyes, slowly solidified.

She let out the breath she had been holding through gritted teeth, sighing as her immediate magical influence left the now prepared spell, it falling down from where it had hovered to rest inert in her waiting hands.

Cupping the spell like it was precious, dangerous, Sol dodged her way though the busy halls of the research laboratory - though she was not a researcher or scientist, rather a mageknight under His Imperial Majesty Aldercapt's flag and employ; she worked in the labs as a weaver, the fortified stations given to the Lord Verstael the only ones capable of maintaining their structure should something go catastrophically wrong in the spell weaving process.

"Oh, Sol!" In front of her as she turned a final corner to reach her destination, tapping away at a keyboard and yet swivelling to see her enter the room simultaneously, Millia - her supervisor - sat, with a pen and clipboard at the ready beside her, the forms held in place already mostly filled in with scrawls of blue ink. "You've made your quota, then?"

"For the day, at least," Sol allowed, and handed over the inert fira to be processed and stored. "Twenty-four spells in twenty-four hours, ready to go at a caster's word."

Millia hummed, and took the spell from Sol, a distracted look crossing her face. "And how are you for raw elements?" She asked.

Before she could stop herself, Sol winced, and hesitated - an answer in and of itself, really.

Millia sighed, closing her eyes briefly as she rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "You're meant to _say_ when you're running low," she muttered, as she clicked through page after page of a spreadsheet on her computer, too fast for Sol to really register what she was looking at. "No free procurement points," she said finally, and raised a pointed brow in Sol's direction. "At least, none in _our_ immediate territory."

At the mere sound of those words, the very _second_ the syllables that made them up had left Millia's mouth - Sol tensed, blinking blue eyes almost fearfully at her supervisor. "What?" She asked, voice small.

"Lucis territories have plenty available," Millia said plainly, and snorted. "Their army doesn't have a dedicated magical unit, not like us - not that they'd know what to do with it anyway if they _did_ , who still uses _flasks_ to alchemize spells in this day and age? - which means that, unlike us, they aren't constantly draining procurement points dry. If you could sneak across the border and into Lucian territory, and restock there - "

"Skulk my way through the _frontlines?_ " Sol hissed out incredulously. "Millia - "

Millia _looked_ at her. "The Head Researcher has been quick to anger, as of late - to say nothing of the Emperor himself. If one of the most gifted weavers among the ground forces were to fail in completing her duty..."

She trailed off, not finishing her sentence - but Sol didn't need her to. _Everyone_ knew of how Lord Verstael treated those he considered annoyances; she could very well imagine.

She swallowed.

"The say the Immortal never leaves the camp Lucian forces make at the edge of the battleground, just outside their wall," she said. "If what they say about that man is true, he'll have glaive and guard alike watching over procurement points so the hunters cannot take what his troops may need in an emergency. I'd _never_ make it, Millia."

Her supervisor barked out a short laugh. "I've seen your file, Candesco," she said, a scolding tone in her voice. "The only reason you weren't drafted for a caster was the fact that your psychological scores said you couldn't handle the heat of all out battle, and your affinity for weaving would have been a waste elsewhere, anyway. My point here being, Sol, that taking into account your skill with magic as well as your markmanship - you and I both know you are _more_ than capable of sneaking through Lucian territory undetected."

Sol didn't refute the words - she couldn't; _they were true_ \- but clearly Millia didn't understand there was a _world_ of difference between _holding_ a purely physical capability of skill and actively _applying_ it.

She couldn't complain, however; couldn't protest - in that direction lied insubordination, and the punishment was never truly equal to the 'crime' in such a situation, at least not in Sol's experience.

And so, instead of grimacing or pleading out like her mind begged her to, Sol instead nodded shortly, and held out her phone, opened to a GPS application. "Can you mark the procurement points for me?"

Millia hummed in agreement, and held her hand out to take the phone, muttering as she tapped at the screen. "Try to gather as much as you possibly can," she said. "Not only will that help you stay within quota, it will deal quite the blow to Lucis if they can't instock their magic inventory for a number of days." She peered up at Sol, eyes set and face stern, and handed her phone back over to her. "All good things, Sol," she finished, and turned back to her computer - a clear dismissal.

"Yes, ma'am," Sol muttered, and fired off a half-hearted salute to Millia's back - trying desperately to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut as she hurried back down the halls.


	4. VERSTAEL|04

The problem with adding a human component, Verstael thought, was the fact that, unlike robotic mechanisms, chemical formulas and lines of code, humans - their responses and the make of each and every one of them - were almost wholly unique and entirely unpredictable, not a single uniform trait shared communally through all.

 _And it_ would _have to be natural,_ he mused to himself, his train of thought a reluctant grumble. _Not twisted and forced into the material as we are now - but rather, always existing there, in concert with the organic materials, as if from..._

"...As if from _birth_ ," he whispered, finishing his train of thought aloud, freezing still in the middle of the hurried walkways of his laboratory, not even registering the startled yelps of those who wandered through the halls having to dodge around him as his mind raced.

_A combination of Eos and Chaos,_ he thought, almost giddy, _of our physical world of Eos and the Unseen Realm -_

_"Oof."_ A woman's voice, young and distracted, and the impact of a warm weight stumbling into him. Verstael turned his head, gazed over his shoulder to see a girl he presumed to be in her twenties, white-blonde and pale as she took in just whom she had collided with - wearing the ash and gold that marked her as one of His Imperial Majesty's mageknights.

"Lord Verstael," she said blankly, seemingly in shock. "I - uh, I am _so_ sorry, sir. My lord." She ducked her head and shoulders down quickly as she spoke, in a shallow approximation of a bow.

He stared at her, struck with a sudden epiphany, a flash of insight he could only call divine intervention - and thanked the goddess for answering his prayers. After all - what was more grounded in the physical realm of Eos, far removed from the chaos of the Unseen Realm, than the discipline of elemancy that had been around far longer than even human memory could recall? And what was closer to said elemancy than _a mage?_

Verstael's gaze automatically flicked down to rove over the young woman's arms. The mageknights were split into two main units, after all, and to clearly distinguish them from one another...

On her right arm, he saw. A band of thick black cloth pricked through and all over with traces of delicate silver embroidery that glimmered in the harsh low light, tied on top of her sleeve, midway between shoulder and elbow.

She was a weaver, then, and piece after piece of the puzzle that had eluded him for so long clicked into a perfect, shining whole. He almost laughed, because it was so _obvious_ \- how could he _not_ have seen it before? The answer, right in front of him, in so many of His Imperial Majesty's unsuspecting mageknights; pure, untapped potential.

"Your name," he barked out at the girl, still in her shallow bow, unmoving and silent as she awaited either his reprimand or dismissal. At his words, she flinched.

"Sol Candesco," she said, and though her features - pale, blue eyed and blond, typical enough in Niflheim though of a lighter shade than the empire's usual fare - spoke perhaps of the blood of Tenebrae flowing through the veins of her family tree, her voice was one hundred percent purely Niflheim, a rhythm drawn out like a beat between each syllable of her words in a natural way that only a native could truly imitate. "Second-lieutenant in the weaver unit of His Imperial Majesty's mageknights."

Letting out a thoughtful hum, Verstael waved her off. "Dismissed," he said, and with one final bow, the girl - Candesco - bolted past him with her head down.

He glanced back down the hall in the direction she had come from, and tried to form a map in his mind of all the sprawling spaces that made up the entirety of his laboratory (he rarely bothered to recall the areas that did not pertain directly to his own personal research), and if he was remembering correctly - and he usually was - back that way lay the storage center of the spells the weavers created, ready for the casters to collect and use in battle whenever the need arose.

 _Definitely a weaver_ , he thought, and wondered curiously to himself just how that would affect the finished product - if, in this case, a caster may be better. The answer to that question, he supposed, would lie with whichever mage type proved to be overall closer to the raw power of elemancy, of Eos pure and unbridled - those that wove together spells with their mind, or those that sparked those spells into action with their bodies. On which did elemancy leave the more lingering mark?

Before he could second guess himself - flashes of doubt often followed flashes of genuis, even when one had a mind as sharp as his own - Verstael turned and began to walk through the halls to the room a mintue of heavy thinking told him was the room of the supervisor for the off duty mageknights and magic research team - head of the same lot of idiot-savants that had (for some reason) come up with failcast, which he still believed was entirely useless, no matter the merits of it they liked to harp on about _every_ bimonthly meet.

The woman that headed the department - Milliana Heri - he had never seen, or at least never cared to _recall_ seeing, but when he entered it was clear she recognised him: she stilled in her abrupt turn around, and the annoyance that had flickered across her face had vanished, smoothing into a mask as she offered him a slight smile.

"Lord Verstael," she said, and her tone was amicable enough. "How can I be of help?"

She was from Solheim, he could tell - her dark skin and her accent, clipped and stressing vowels over the consonants Niflheim favoured, proved that (he didn't care, if she was here she was the best in her field; Niflheim could not and would not accept any less), and for all the youthfullness of her skin, free of lines and wrinkles, she was clearly older than she looked at first glance - her hair was peppered through with great swathes of grey and streaks of white, and her voice croaked at spots like the dying gasps of a pack a day smoker.

"The weaver that was just in here," he said. "I would like her file, and the files of any weavers or casters of equal rankings to her."

Supervisor Heri blinked at him, lip falling open briefly, as if with a question - but she did not speak any, and after a brief moment, shook her head and turned back to her computer. "Do you want them hardcopy, or in digital?" She asked over her shoulder, fingers poised above her keyboard.

"Hardcopy," Verstael said. "And make sure to enlarge the text, too - my eyes aren't what they used to be."

"At once, Lord Verstael," she said, and after a few button presses, a click or two of her mouse, the whirring _ch-thunk_ of the printer by her computer started spitting out pages with a high whine ringing through the air. "It will only take a minute; there aren't many mageknights in either unit of Lieutenant Candesco's caliber."

Verstael felt his eyebrows raise. "The woman is only a second-lieutenant, is she not?" He asked - and granted, while he didn't claim to hold any familiarity with military ranks, he was fairly certain that one was quite a ways down the hierachy.

Supervisor Heri shrugged. "Battle stress," she said. "The psychs don't want her on field unless it's absolutely necessary, and besides, she has a gift for weaving I've never see before. She'd be wasted elsewhere." An apologetic look sent his way, as the woman startled out of her chair at realising her printer had quieted, its job done. "I am so sorry, my lord," she said, and walked over to him to hand him the personell files he had requested.

He waved her off, distracted. "How many here?" He asked, and she held out a single hand with all fingers raised.

"Five," she said bluntly. "I could get you more if you just want pure magical ability, probably, but for all round stats these five are all about equal, and I can't think of anyone _outrageously_ stronger than them - if any at all."

Verstael hummed, and turned the files over in his hands. Five files, and - not including Sol Candesco - a perfect match up of two women and two men: possibly a coincidence, possibly a sign from high that he _was_ on the right track; a divine blessing to go forth and _do_ what he intended, the goddess smiling down on him as he worked.

"Is that all, my lord?" Supervisor Heri, still smiling politely at him, but looking tense around the eyes, harried as if she wished for him to leave so she could get back to her own work.

"For now," he allowed, and turned to leave. "Keep my investigation quiet, Supervisor," he warned as a parting shot, and was rewarded with the sound of a swallow as she nodded, her smile turning brittle as she closed the door shut behind him.

He took only a few steps down the hall before pausing, focusing in with laser intent on the details of each and every file he held. Supervisor Heri had not been lying to him - each of the mageknights in these files were truly impressive in their own way, and each with at least a passable modicum of skill in both aspects of elemancy; both weaving and casting.

However, to his eyes, Sol Candesco stood above her four comrades, and he once more sent a quick prayer of fervent thanks the way of the goddess for sending this woman to cross his path.

She excelled in all magical disciplines - had been one of the first testers of the 'manadrive' he'd patented years earlier, a prototype attempt to make chaos wieldable that had ultimately ended in failure - but had shown that _Sol Candesco_ had succeeded where so many of her fellows had failed, and _not_ succumbed to the toxic strains of chaos that had invaded the bodies of those that had worn the drives and mutated into something caught between man and daemon.

 _Likely a direct side-effect of her close connection to the elemancy of Eos_ , he thought. _The others in that trial run weren't from the mageknights, but one each from the other ground force units. If they had used elemancy more frequently, than perhaps..._

He shook his head clear. The manadrives had been a failure, and dwelling on them now did him no good, not when he was so close to a breakthrough in his Magitek.

The only downside he could see to Sol Candesco, and the only one written in the file was the fact that the girl (aged twenty-six, he saw, no mention of family or birth records) could simply _not_ deal with the pressure of battle. She'd been a foundling, apparently, scooped up as a child after one of the empire's conquests and raised in one of their military academies. The psychs had chalked it up to some lingering remnant or trauma that had scarred her in the sacking of whatever insignificant city she had lived in as a child - but lucky for Verstael, that flaw held no issue for him, nor what he wanted from the woman known as Sol Candesco. In fact, the very line, signed off by the General that oversaw her unit directly that stated Sol Candesco was not, under any circumstances, to enter into a battle where a life or death situation may occur or rely on her to keep her focus -

Well. It only made things all the easier for him, didn't it? After all, what he wanted from her required her to stay _away_ from things like battlefields for a long while - the biggest problem would be convincing her comrades and their commanding officers that they needed the same treatment - though if it came down to it, a word or two from the Emperor would doubtlessly smooth things over.

Staring down at the stats emblazoned across the front page of Sol Candesco's service record, Verstael wondered if it was finally time for him to give the Argent line an heir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no, sol is not going to do the nasty with an old guy. artificial insemination is a thing, my friends.
> 
> also the use of argent as verstael's last name was not a mistake and the ~~punchline~~ reason as to why will become clear in a later chapter. (also because besithias is a fucking stupid name even by this games standards so *shrugs*)


	5. SOL|05

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> casual reminder: verstael's last name is argent in this, not besithias, because besithias is a fucking stupid name and no-one will convince me otherwise. i may have changed noct's mum's placeholder name to aulea and added in some stuff to reference the fact that her and regis were childhood friends, but i'm not changing anything about the niflheim segments no matter what's revealed. *could literally not care less*
> 
> i was trying to stick to one pov per chapter no matter how short doing that made said chapter, but. looking at the next chapter. and some of the ones that are coming after. that wasn't going to work. like, at all.

The night air was warm, which was rare for the provinces and territories of Niflheim, even on the border of one their conquered territories, close to where Lucis had laid the line for the battleground of what was surely their final stand - but apparently quite common for the desert brush land Sol found herself skulking through, cursing silently every time she had to click her phone to life in order to check her location in regards to the various procurement points scattered around the land she found herself in, tensing when the blue-white light of the screen illuminated the empty air around her, lighting up the dark like a beacon, signaling for whatever Lucis forces may be around to power their way to her.

There was a point for the ice element near her - and, roving her gaze over the land as she shut her phone into standby, she could see silver motes of blue light warping the night air in the distance, like a mirage caused by a heat haze, stained with the prismatic pink and green of the aurora that surrounded astral shards.

Slowly, she began to make her way over to it, sticking low to the ground and dodging through low bushes and around rocks, making use of the natural coverage around her to blend into the darker shadows in the desert nightscape, grateful in that moment for the black clothes she had chosen to wear as camouflage, even if wearing the enemy's colour had made her near physically ill when pulling them on, hours earlier, awaiting the true dark that followed sunset. Even her hair, her pride and joy - golden curls that she hadn't cut in years, the one piece of vanity she had allowed herself growing up in Ljómandi House, surrounded by other foundling orphans given to the state; and one of the less serious reasons she had joined up with the mageknights, all those years ago, when she had finally decided that what she wanted out of life was to fight - after all, mageknights were not only one of the few units that allowed women on the battlefield, but into positions of power, and she wouldn't have to cut her hair. It had been an easy decision, and - as much as she loved guns and machinery - the only other department she'd truly considered, the technicians unit - hadn't really stood up to what the mageknights could and did offer her.

Reaching the procurement point, lines of blue-silver sparking and winking like radioactive veins through the shards of knifepoint sharp rock that break through the ground, immovable and eternal as Eos' blessing to Her world and Her people (how Lucis can worship a goddess explicitly from another world when theirs has nothing but love for Her children Sol will never know, but to her it is all the more reason for the crystal to be taken from them - slowly they taint Eos' Light with the poisonous chaos of their _Lady_ ; how long before their plague spreads to the rest of the continent, too?), resonating through the mana particles that hover like invisible fireflies through the air, coming to rest like static buzz on the bare skin of her face, kissing into her awareness like electricity as she holds out a hand to the stones that light up like the sun, even brighter in her presence - and _pulls_ on the pure magic of _ice_ humming low beneath the dry earth at the edge of her senses.

It's over almost too fast - her hand near fully numb as the cold she pulled into herself radiates up her arm, over her shoulders and finally to her chest, piercing her heart as she shudders, blinking the twinkling lights of golden stars out of her vision as she gasps out for air; drawing in the pure elements of Eos is never a sensation one grows used to, and each time is just as shocking - as exhilarating - as that first time out the back of Ljómandi House, playing with the fire that still burned there to this day.

The ice was her last procurement point of the night - already she'd stockpiled from several thunder and fire elements, and if she walked out any further there was a good chance she'd still be stuck behind enemy lines when the sun rose, something she _very much_ didn't want. Not only that, but another clock was ticking down, too - she could only hold the raw energy of elemancy within her for so long. And though she could last longer than _many_ other mages she had met over the ages, Sol knew very well, from experience, that that timer would run down far faster than she expected if she let herself be lax with caution. She needed to return to Niflheim, or at least to a Niflheim run base in one of their nearby territories, so she could weave in safety before the pure energy of Eos, not truly meant for human hands, ate her alive from the inside out.

If legends told true, those of the line of Lucis, tainted and twisted with foreign chaos in their veins and souls, could hold the magic of elemancy, of Eos – the goddess they scorned for an interloper – prisoner within themselves for an indefinite amount of time, holding it still and static and not allowing it to return to the earth as it must when cast. The idea was… _horrifying,_ to Sol – how did they – _did anyone_ – not see how those of Lucis were killing the planet?

(But at the same time, deep inside and in a place she would never admit or show to anyone, not even herself – a jealousy for that power burned within her like a bank of embers that just _would not_ dim. She’d lived to be a mage her entire life – loved Eos, loved elemancy; why must _her_ experience with magic be short and fleeting when those who spurned their status as Her chosen people, Her children – get an unlimited amount of time with a gift they didn’t and _couldn’t_ truly appreciate?)

Though Sol had been tense, and scared at the idea of going into what could very well be a live battlefield – a concern she had expressed to Millia when she had been all but _ordered_ to venture out into the great unknowns of Lucis’ barren desert territory – there had also been a sort of confidence she held; she knew her skills were good, she just didn’t know if they were _good_ enough to face up against those of Lucis that the dreaded Immortal led. Loqi – a fast rising young officer in the tech units ground forces, holding a skill with guns that she could claim as equal to hers but an ability with the mech suits Lord Verstael had made that no-one could match, granting him _some_ clout with the higher ups – had all but declared the man known as the Immortal as his arch nemesis. Sol, several years older than Loqi and in an entirely different force of the military than him, had no real idea of what had happened between the two men to set off such venomous hatred in a young man that had always seemed reasonable to her – but it only cinched the fact that Cor Leonis was a dangerous man; someone she wouldn’t want to face, at least not without a fully armed raid force backing her up.

The fact that she hadn’t encountered _anyone_ – not even a low ranked grunt, let alone the Immortal or one of his higher ranked officers – was relieving, but also slightly…anticlimactic. Not that she was complaining – Sol hated to fight; the last thing she wanted to do was get caught in an encounter – but she also couldn’t help but feel that, somehow, it had been too easy. Like the other shoe was going to drop any second, just as she began to let her guard down.

Finally – _finally_ – crossing back over the edge of enemy lines to Niflheim territory; home and safety, Sol felt her shoulders _slump_ , all the nervous tension and energy she had been holding in, clamped onto as tight as her teeth, gritted together in her mouth dissipating as the stress all but _slid_ off of her, the only thing keeping her, swaying from relief, on her feet the magical energy she still held buzzing through her.

“Lieutenant Sol Candesco?” So wrapped up was she in her own overwhelming relief, she hadn’t heard the soldier on border patrol come up behind her – she jumped, whirled, and returned the salute he offered her.

“Yes?” She said, confirming her identity and questioning just what he wanted from her.

“The Lord Verstael awaits you inside,” he said, holding his gun horizontally across his chest and jerking his chin towards the plain cement, low lit and hulking against the landscape of sand and brush along the edge of the border between Niflheim run territory and Lucis.

_What?_ Sol blinked, a thrill of fear running through her as a wild thought crosses her mind – is she actually going to be punished for running into him in his lab earlier that week? Has he _really_ traveled all the way to a small, insignificant and _dangerous_ border-base just to punish her, barely ranked as any sort of officer and hanging onto one of the lowest rungs in the military hierarchy? _Why?_

“Thank you,” she said through stiff lips, moving automatically towards the building the guard’s gesture had indicated. If she truly was going to be punished tonight, it was best not to draw it out by angering him with an even longer wait.

“Good luck,” the soldier calls, and as she raises a hand in acknowledgement Sol can’t help but shudder at the genuine sympathy in his voice – as if she really _does_ have something to worry about.


End file.
